


what the ocean gives back

by kuro49



Series: thirty days of writing [11]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Men Cooking, Men Crying, Post-Operation Pitfall (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-22 10:59:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4832888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It always starts with him trying to do something nice. It always ends with a disaster on their hands. </p>
<p>This time, it ends with Herc crying in their kitchen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what the ocean gives back

**Author's Note:**

> for wen, who asked for crying!Herc (and got something else totally different, ooops).
> 
> written for the prompt: _in search of sea life._ i personally do not think this one is 'cesty at all but given how much hansencest i've written, i cannot say with 100% confidence that this is not tinted. feel free to yell at me if anyone feels that warnings are due.

It always starts with him trying to do something nice.

It always ends with a disaster on their hands. That much is a given.

Still, he tries.

If not for the kid then he’d call it something for the both of them.

(This time, it ends with him crying in their kitchen. For the life of him, Herc cannot remember the last time he’s cried, not since that little scene in the hallway of the Hong Kong Shatterdome before Pitfall. Even then, there weren’t actual tears, just a clench in the spaces of his chest where his heart should be. Nothing like the sting in his eyes or the wetness on his cheeks like now. It’s a damn waterworks, that’s what it is.)

Herc starts that morning off with a trip to the local market, and he doesn’t use this word a lot but it still feels like a miracle to see the slow return of the fishing industry. He doesn’t like to think about the direct hand he has had in this, he doesn’t like to think about the time when he has himself convinced that Chuck isn’t coming back from this at all.

It almost killed him then even with the kid in an induced coma at one of the best hospitals in the country.

To think, half a year later and Herc is walking down each aisle of his local market, taking his time, the only concern running through his mind is whether he has left the gates to the backyard unlocked just in case Max gets curious again. It is something he hasn’t done since the Breach tore a rift opened in the depths of the Pacific.

For all his years, Herc loves the ocean.

He loves the deep blue. He loves the Great Barrier Reef off of the coast of Queensland. He remembers never quite getting that chance to show Chuck that it isn’t all danger and death, that it can be the sun filtering through that first dip beneath the waves.

At the time, he has thought their biggest problem would be coral bleaching, not Kaiju Blue. But he has seen the damage, firsthand, the wreck of that colour just spanning the ocean, the current that carries it further out to contaminate the rest. He has had that blue clinging to the curl of Lucky then Striker’s fist. He has seen the days where there’s no hope.

But now, he is seeing the start of a new one in place of end of the world.

It feels a little like take two, but there are no headstones with his son’s name on it, and there are no empty coffins buried just beneath that.

Second chances are what this is.

He’s learned it himself, and he’s heard it repeated back at him. If there’s a shot, you take it. You hold on to that, and you don’t let go. There is no hesitation this time around.

He comes home with a bag of groceries, and lays it all out on their kitchen counter, scallops and prawns and clams, garlic and onions and sweet potatoes. It isn’t noon yet but the sunlight that comes through the windows leave the tiles warm beneath his bare feet.

Herc is not really someone to call himself a cook but he is good at one or two things in the kitchen that isn’t washing the dirty dishes.

This seafood soup is one of them (the other being mashed potatoes, not the kind made from the powdered mix they would always have at every ‘dome’s mess but the kind made from real potatoes and a whole lot of butter).

Well, not so much at this very moment given he is crying in front of Chuck and a chopping board full of sliced onions. The latter having been shoved aside when the kid is checking him over for cuts or any traces of blood when his dad hasn’t quite stopped crying.

They probably look ridiculous, two grown men, one in an apron, another still drenched in sweat after a run. The two of them standing in the middle of the kitchen with the pan overheating on the stove and the broth boiling in the pot. Max is panting at their feet in what could possibly pass for doggy concern.

In Herc’s own defence, it has been a long time, and he has kind of forgotten how easily he cries when it comes to onions. To further that defence, in his attempt to wipe his tears away as he hears Chuck coming in through the backdoor had only made things worse when he reflexively rubs at his eyes with the hand still dripping with onion juices.

Chuck isn’t sure whether he should be laughing or crying right along with the old man once he realizes it is just the fucking onions in combination with his dad’s inability to use his words.

A muffled _it’s nothing_ said between a clatter of the knife against the counter top really does not help when he comes in to the sight of his father crying like he’s never seen before.

“Is lunch ruined?”

Herc looks to him and his eyes are red but nothing is burnt. He still has the onions to be sautéed and the seafood is due to go into the broth with a couple more minutes on the stove. He gives pause, surveying the damage that is mostly just the residue burning in his eyes. He allows Chuck to drag his hands to the sink, under the spray of the tap to rinse away the last of the onion stench.

Where the water is cold, the kid’s hands are warm.

He lets the kid take over the chopping board, and replies, only a little bit taken back by the gentleness that Chuck has most certainly never learned from his old man. There’s a lot that has changed since Pitfall, and none of it bad.

“I think I can salvage something here.”

It is still something of a disaster but it is hardly the worst they’ve had. At the end of the day, it is hardly the end of the world when they end up with too much soup on their hands. The faint curve over Chuck’s mouth isn’t quite a smile but he is getting there.

They both are, and with the familiarity of a kitchen of his own in this house of theirs, that is something to be said.

**Author's Note:**

> and because i am so serious, please imagine herc with onion goggles for next time.


End file.
